This was a camera that I owned only for a little while. I’ll explain why. When my daughter was born back in the 90’s, I bought my first Nikon. It was the F60 from Dixons. I wasn’t that interested in photography at the time, but it allowed me to take some nice shots. In 2004 the F60 went into the basement when I bought my first DSLR, the D70, and it stayed there for many years.
About 3 years ago, having developed a keen interest in photography and having been able to practice and learn relatively cheaply – if you don’t count the cost of the digital cameras and lenses – I picked up the F60 again. I quickly realised it wasn’t good enough to work with my existing crop of Nikon lenses, so I bought the F80 which gave me full aperture control even on the G lenses.
The F80 worked beautifully with both my Nikon lenses and my Sigma f-mounts. Clean and sharp images, and nice and light to carry around with one of the mid-range zooms on it. But the F80 has a serious flaw: the door latches are made of plastic, a fairly brittle plastic at that. If you just close the camera back without raising the latches first then you run the risk of them snapping off which is what happened in my case. So now I have a lightweight, convenient camera with the modes I need…and no door lock. Maybe I’ll pick up another one some time. In the meantime I have the F90x (no aperture mode for G lenses), the F65 and my latest Nikon – the F4. What a beauty, but I’ll save that for another post.
These were taken in and around Bury and Radcliffe in Lancashire on Portra 400. It was raining, obviously.
Great and way underated Nikon! Right now prices are rock bottom. I owned one…..then sold it…..regretted it and bought another for £20……. I love the grid lines on demand. This last one is here to stay. I prefer it to the much heavier pro F100 or indeed any of the others including my F4.
Had one around 2000-ish. Really loved it with the MB16 grip; so you could use 4AA’s instead of the expensive CR123 battery’s. + you’ve got a better grip.
Hello Chris,
I also still have my F80 which is a very nice camera .
Also have a F601 of which the doorlock broke, but with a simple DIY trick I managed to fix it, what I did was bonding a very thin metal plate to it with a good adhesive.
First i modeled the metal plate in the shape of the lock.
After bonding I painted the metal piece black, I always am very carefull opening and closing the back, helping by pushing the backdoor a little in that way there will be less tension at the lock .
The F80 also had after some years a problem the plasic housing aspecially at the backside became sticky, it was like you had something covered with a glue in your hands.
I tried another DIY treatment, first I cleaned everything sticky wih alcohol and after that I painted the camera body with a semigloss black paint , the camera no looks almost new and feels normal, no more sticky.
Greetings,
Kees from the Netherlands.